OCC People:
Examiner's Son Earns Top SAT Score

03/06/2014

Of the 1.66 million students who took the SAT in 2013, only 494 achieved the highest possible score of 2400. One of those students was 17-year-old Cooper Knaak, son of NBE Tim Knaak and his wife Patty. Knaak, a 28-year veteran of the OCC, lives in Nebraska and works in the Sioux City, Iowa, field office. The home-schooled Cooper scored 800 on each section of the test—critical reading, mathematics, and writing. “My wife and I got up early at 5:30 a.m. to look [at the scores] online, and Cooper looked on his iPad. When we found out, we yelled and screamed,” recalls Knaak. A high school junior, Cooper has already received an offer to skip his senior year and enroll as a freshman at the University of Southern California. He is also considering Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology. Says Knaak, “My wife teaches our son and gets him the right resources. I do what I can to help. It’s a labor of love for both of us.”